Description: From the first writer to win the PEN/Faulkner Award twice comes this redemptive, healing love story that celebrates the survival of an endangered urban black community and the ways in which people redeem themselves.
Brief description: JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, Philadelphia Fire, and the story collection God's Gym. He is the recipient of two PEN/ Faulkner Awards and has been nominated for the National Book Award.
Review Quotes:
"A masterpiece of verve and feeling. Wideman's writing, like Toni Morrison's, is so pure and convincing that he can break the rules of classical storytelling, even invent some new ones." Boston Globe
"This novel is about two wounded souls who fall in love under the pressure of urban warfare in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. 'Through Wideman's masterly narrative the reader learns how to accept hopelessness without giving up hope, ' Walter Mosley wrote here last year. ' Two Cities is as enjoyable as it is important.'" -- Scott Veale The New York Times
"Wideman is now our leading black male writer...and one of our finest writers, period." New Republic